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"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast
on the morning of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip
rose from old habit, but as sorrow was manifest in every smile,
the sound of every word, and even every footstep in that house
since the terrible news had come, so now the smile of the little
princess- influenced by the general mood though without knowing
its cause- was such as to remind one still more of the general
sorrow.
"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique*- as
Foka the cook calls it- has disagreed with me."
*Fruhstuck: breakfast.
"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale.
Oh, you are very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running
with her soft, ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent
for?" said one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna
was a midwife from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald
Hills for the last fortnight.)
"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps
that's it. I'll go. Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and
was about to leave the room.
"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical
suffering on the little princess' face, an expression of childish
fear of inevitable pain showed itself.
"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion,
say so, Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry
capriciously like a suffering child and to wring her little hands
even with some affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room
to fetch Mary Bogdanovna.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left
the room.
The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her
small, plump white hands with an air of calm importance.
"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said
Princess Mary looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.
"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary
Bogdanovna, not hastening her steps. "You young ladies should
not know anything about it."
"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?"
said the princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's
wishes they had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were
expecting him at any moment.)
"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary
Bogdanovna. "We'll manage very well without a doctor."
Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something
heavy being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were
carrying the large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into
the bedroom. On their faces was a quiet and solemn look.
Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds
in the house, now and then opening her door when someone passed
and watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing
with quiet steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess
and turned away. She did not venture to ask any questions, and
shut the door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking
her prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise
and distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement.
Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna,
who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden
it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head.
"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the
nurse, "and here I've brought the prince's wedding candles
to light before his saint, my angel," she said with a sigh.
"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"
"God is merciful, birdie."
The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down
by the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began
reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look
at one another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse
encouraging. Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling
that Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing
to the superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the
less a woman in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not
to know; no one spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid
and respectful good manners habitual in the prince's household,
a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a consciousness
that something great and mysterious was being accomplished at
that moment made itself felt.
There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men
servants' hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying
serfs' quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept.
The old prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study
and sent Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.- "Say only
that 'the prince told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."
"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary
Bogdanovna, giving the messenger a significant look.
Tikhon went and told the prince.
"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind
him, and Tikhon did not hear the slightest sound from the study
after that.
After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles,
and, seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed
his perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently
kissed him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing
the candles or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery
in the world continued its course. Evening passed, night came,
and the feeling of suspense and softening of heart in the presence
of the unfathomable did not lessen but increased. No one slept.
It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish
to resume its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with
desperate fury. A relay of horses had been sent up the highroad
to meet the German doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment,
and men on horseback with lanterns were sent to the crossroads
to guide him over the country road with its hollows and snow-covered
pools of water.
Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent,
her luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line
of which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped
from under the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her
chin.
Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones,
scarcely hearing or understanding her own words, what she had
told hundreds of times before: how the late princess had given
birth to Princess Mary in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant
woman to help instead of a midwife.
"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she
said.
Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement
of the window, from which the double frame had been removed (by
order of the prince, one window frame was removed in each room
as soon as the larks returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed
latch, set the damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle
with its chill, snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse,
putting down the stocking she was knitting, went to the window
and leaning out tried to catch the open casement. The cold wind
flapped the ends of her kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair.
"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue!
" she said, holding the casement and not closing it. "With
lanterns. Most likely the doctor."
"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I
must go and meet him, he does not know Russian."
Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet
the newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through
the window a carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance.
She went out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow
candle which guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip,
the footman, stood looking scared and holding another candle.
Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase, one could hear
the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice that
seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.
"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"
"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house
steward, who was downstairs.
Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the
steps in the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase
more rapidly.
"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it
can't be, that would be too extraordinary," and at the very
moment she thought this, the face and figure of Prince Andrew,
in a fur cloak the deep collar of which covered with snow, appeared
on the landing where the footman stood with the candle. Yes, it
was he, pale, thin, with a changed and strangely softened but
agitated expression on his face. He came up the stairs and embraced
his sister.
"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting
for a reply- which he would not have received, for the princess
was unable to speak- he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs
again with the doctor who had entered the hall after him (they
had met at the last post station), and again embraced his sister.
"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having
taken off his cloak and felt boots, he went to the little princess'
apartment.
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